Iron Earth, Copper Sky

by Yashar Kemal

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Yashar Kemal

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Turkey’s greatest novelist, Yashar Kemal was an unsurpassed storyteller who brought to life a world of staggering violence and hallucinatory beauty. Kemal’s books delve deeply into the entrenched social and historical conflicts that scar the Middle East. The Wind from the Plains trilogy is widely seen as his masterpiece, alongside the legendary Memed, My Hawk.

  After a particularly bad season, a group of poor cotton-pickers are unable to pay their creditor, shopkeeper Adil Effendi. Overwhelmed with shame and guilt, they wait in terror for Adil to come and demand retribution. But when he inexplicably fails to appear, Adil begins to represent an irrational and tyrannical force, growing in their minds until they become sick with apprehension and obsessed with the terrible disaster that is sure to come upon them.

  In their despair they turn to Tashbash, a brave, decent and loyal man, investing him with virtue, grace and miraculous power. But the cotton-pickers have no idea of the effect of their idolatry on Tashbash, with his innocent doubts and mental torment, until his fate finally befalls him and the novel draws to its apposite close. Written with deep compassion and lyrical beauty, this is a novel alive with the acute observation of human nature.

  About the Author

  Yashar Kemal was born in 1922 in a village on the cotton-growing plains of Chukurova, which feature in this novel. He received some basic education in village schools, then became an agricultural labourer and factory-worker. His championship of the poor peasants lost him a succession of jobs, but he was eventually able to buy a typewriter and set himself up as a public letter-writer in the small town of Kadirli. After a spell as a journalist he published a volume of short stories in 1952, and in 1955 his first novel, Memed, My Hawk. This won the Varlik Prize for the best novel of the year. It has sold over a quarter of a million copies in Turkey and has been translated into every major language.

  Yashar Kemal was a member of the Central Committee of the banned Workers’ Party. In 1971 he was held in prison for 26 days, then released without being charged.

  Kemal, many of whose books have been translated into English by his wife, is Turkey’s most influential living writer.

  By the same author

  MEMED, MY HAWK

  THE WIND FROM THE PLAIN

  ANATOLIAN TALES

  THEY BURN THE THISTLES

  THE LEGEND OF ARARAT

  THE LEGEND OF THE THOUSAND BULLS

  THE UNDYING GRASS

  THE LORDS OF AKCHASAZ:

  Murder in the Ironsmiths’ Market

  THE SAGA OF A SEAGULL

  THE SEA-CROSSED FISHERMAN

  THE BIRDS HAVE ALSO GONE

  Chapter 1

  Silently they made their way towards the oak-wood. Hasan walked ahead, hunched forward, his hands thrust under his jacket. Ummahan followed close behind, her eyes on her feet.

  The world was shrouded in snow, hill and vale lost under a sheer unsullied whiteness. Even the sky was quite white. Only down south, way over the Taurus forest, a pale greenish-blue haze hovered like a flimsy veil spread over the boundless whiteness. A dazzling sun bore down on this frozen expanse, reflecting millions of tiny silver sparks.

  The two children were barefoot and stepped over the crisp hard snow as though on live coals.

  Hasan looked back.

  ‘The minute we get to the forest …’ he began, then stopped.

  ‘Yes?’ Ummahan asked eagerly.

  ‘Nothing. I’ve changed my mind. I won’t tell you.’

  ‘Don’t then!’ She shrugged. ‘As if I cared!’

  ‘Like hell you don’t!’

  She did not answer back. He was obviously spoiling for a fight.

  ‘D’you hear?’ he insisted. ‘I said like hell …’

  ‘I heard you, brother. What d’you want me to do if you won’t tell me?’

  ‘I won’t,’ he shouted. He began to run. He ran so fast that Ummahan could not keep up with him.

  He’s become strange, this brother of mine. Never talking, always cross … Grinding his teeth, howling in his sleep … Grown-ups always tell of such children … How the wasting sickness gets them and they die. Hasan … Singing and laughing all day long … And now … Like a dead tree …

  When Hasan looked back Ummahan was nowhere to be seen. He could feel the sun now like a warm caress on his neck.

  ‘Ummahan!’ he called, blinking against the glaring whiteness. ‘Where are you? Ummahan!’

  ‘I’m coming …’ Her thin voice trailed off over the wilderness of snow.

  He caught sight of her, struggling up the white slope like a tiny black insect.

  ‘Hurry! I’m going to be late because of you, damn you,’ he shouted.

  She was sweating. ‘Please Hasan, let me get my breath …’

  ‘I shouldn’t have brought you along,’ he burst out. ‘ “Never set out with a bitch, or you’re sure to fall into a ditch!” ’ He made his voice as gruff as he could and held his chin wisely in his hand like the village elders. This was sure to exasperate her.

  Ape! Piddler! she thought. How he wetted his bed … I’ll fling it in his face now … But then he’ll never tell me the secret of the wood …

  ‘ “You’ll get lies all day long and more than you need, but never a shred of sense from the petticoat breed”,’ he taunted again. Then he paused expectantly.

  There was no reply from Ummahan.

  She’s pretending she doesn’t care, the hussy. You just wait, my girl!

  ‘ “Neither faith nor loyalty can you find in a whore!” ’

  He saw Ummahan’s eyes filling with tears. A pang of remorse shot through him. ‘That wasn’t for you,’ he blurted out, taking her hand. ‘You’re my dear, beautiful sister. It wasn’t for you.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Ummahan cried triumphantly. ‘Would a boy ever call his own sister a whore?’

  This irritated him. ‘Well, haven’t you rested enough?’ he said. ‘You must have collected all the breath in the world by now. Come on, hurry!’ He spurted on. ‘When we get to the forest …’ He licked his lips. ‘Aha! Then …’

  ‘Who cares?’ she retorted, beginning to lose patience.

  Hasan, exasperated, shouted. ‘A whore, that’s what you’ll be when you grow up!’

  ‘Yes, a whore,’ she shouted back defiantly. ‘That’s what I’ll be. Such a whore and oh, what a fine time I’ll have!’

  He could not believe his ears. A good spanking that’s what she needs. But suppose she turns back home and leaves me? He was afraid of entering the oak-wood alone.

  ‘Girl,’ he sai
d, ‘I ought to trample you underfoot, but … Come on, walk!’

  ‘I won’t! I’ll go and tell Father everything you’ve said. Every single thing!’

  ‘Go to hell! Don’t you know Father’s worried to death? If you tell him, I’ll hack you to pieces with this axe. Now walk!’

  ‘Only if you promise to tell me the secret of the wood.’

  ‘Walk and I’ll tell you.’

  High overhead a flock of birds flew past, a scattering of black specks in the emptiness of the sky.

  There was a weight on Hasan’s heart, an aching pain he had never known before. That flame-like blue bird, the elusive bird of good luck that digs into steep riverbanks to nest deep down in the bowels of the earth like a snake … If only he could catch one now! No one but Old Halil had ever been known to trap a blue bird. He used to pin the bird’s glossy jet black beak on to some child’s shoulder, an amulet against want and poverty for ever … But there was no Old Halil now. He had disappeared in the autumn when they had gone down to pick cotton in the Chukurova plain. His son had given him up for dead, and the chapter from the Koran had been read in his memory.

  ‘Dead?’ Hasan’s grandmother had cried. ‘He? Die? That fiend, that limb of Satan whose murder would be sanctioned by all the four Holy Books? Oh no, neighbours! Oh no, he’ll never die, that one!’

  The villagers had been shocked. ‘But Meryemdje, can’t the old chap die like any other human being?’

  ‘How dare you read the Koran, how dare you recite the Mevlutfn1 for that infidel, that renegade?’

  Long Ali had tried to stop her. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mother, don’t! He’s dead and gone. It’s a sin to speak against the dead, however wicked they were. They’ve nothing more to do with this world …’

  ‘Old Halil isn’t dead!’ she had continued to repeat obstinately.

  The Mevlut was held on the barren cotton field, with all the villagers attending. The Bald Minstrel intoned the prayer just as though he were singing a familiar ballad, and the women, as always, were moved to tears by the magic of his voice. Only one person was missing.

  ‘My ears mustn’t hear our Prophet Muhammet’s holy Mevlut sung for that apostate,’ Meryemdje muttered as she hurried to the farthest corner of the field near the irrigation ditch. The sound followed her. Her hands over her ears, she hastened on, but the chanting seemed to rise as it floated over the flat land. She flung herself down and bent her forehead to the warm Chukurova earth. ‘Oh Mother Earth, please stop that Bald Minstrel from sinning against my beautiful white-bearded Allah! Turn his tongue into wood …’ She scrambled to her feet and rushed on until she came to a hollow behind a clump of trees. It was like the sun flowing brightly back over the glistening world after a dark spell of rain. The sound had died away at last.

  When she returned to the cotton field the Mevlut was over. The Bald Minstrel tried to banter with her but thought better of it after one glance at her face.

  ‘My beautiful black earth!’ she cried, as she sank to the ground and began to pound the earth. ‘It’s you I’m speaking to and no one else here. These villagers don’t deserve to be spoken to any more. They’ve made a mockery of our religion. They’ve annoyed our Holy Prophet. I wouldn’t stop here another minute among these infidels, it’s only old age that pins me down. I tell you, my clever all-knowing earth, my sultan earth, I’ll never open my mouth again to anyone in this village, not even to its beasts and insects! Because I’ll have you know, Old Halil isn’t dead!’

  Long Ali rushed up and clapped her mouth shut. Meryemdje was shrieking and struggling like one possessed.

  ‘That Meryemdje!’ the villagers said. ‘She’s gone raving mad.’

  ‘She always was mad.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s getting worse as she grows older.’

  From that day on Meryemdje was never again heard speaking to anyone in the village.

  Hasan was gathering brushwood as though his life depended on it. He piled it on the sandy earth at the foot of a rock that jutted out like an awning, forming a small cave where the snow had not penetrated. Then, to Ummahan’s amazement he produced a brand new box of matches.

  ‘So that’s your secret!’ she cried.

  ‘You’re dying to know, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘This is only one of my secrets, and don’t worry, I didn’t steal them. I earned them by the sweat of my brow.’

  It came to her like lightning.

  ‘I know!’ she cried gleefully. ‘I know how you got them!’

  ‘Say it then, since you’re so clever,’ he jeered. ‘But mind you, if you’re wrong I’ll give you a good spanking.’

  ‘Those cherry shoots you carried all the way down to the Chukurova, you swapped them for these. That’s what you did.’

  He was taken aback. Why the little witch, he thought with sudden pride, she’s clever our Ummahan.

  He struck a match and held it to the sticks. They blazed up instantly and the two children huddled down shoulder to shoulder, as close as they could to the slow-spreading warmth.

  ‘Do you know, Ummahan … But first, swear you’ll never tell a soul.’

  ‘I swear it.’

  ‘Say Mother’ll die if I do.’

  Ummahan hesitated. ‘Let Mother die if I do …’

  Hasan’s face lit up. ‘You see this box? Well, I’ve got another nine of them. All for those cherry shoots! These matches’ll last me ten years, fifteen years …’

  ‘Oh, they’ll last for ever!’ she exclaimed admiringly.

  Hasan was pleased. ‘Look!’ He drew a sling from his pocket. ‘I got this too. When it’s spring and warm again, we’ll be able to shoot birds.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ she cried. ‘Dozens and dozens …’

  ‘And then we’ll light a fire with these matches …’

  ‘I’ll pluck them clean and salt and cook them.’

  ‘And then we’ll have a feast.’

  A warm longing for roasted, fragrant meat welled up in them.

  ‘Just wait till the warm spring days are here. Just wait, dear sister …’

  She was quick to take advantage of his softness. ‘What was it you were going to tell me when we came to the forest?’

  ‘Shh!’ he said. ‘Later, we’ve got plenty of time. We’ll gather the wood in the afternoon so we don’t have to go back to the village till sundown. Do you know, Ummahan, I’m frightened of that village. I’m afraid Adil Effendi will come …’

  She turned her huge deep black eyes on him and saw the fear on his face. ‘So am I,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m terrified.’

  ‘Poor Father, he’s so worried he doesn’t know what to do.’

  ‘Mother’s afraid too. The whole village is full of fear, as if it were being threatened by a pack of wolves. Only Grandmother’s not afraid.’

  ‘But she won’t speak to anyone, not even to us. If only that Adil Effendi would come and do whatever he’s going to do to us. I wish it were over …’

  He moved closer to the fire, straining his long thin neck. His huge black eyes shone brightly in his bony face. A faint scar ran down his left temple to his neck like a vein. His hair, roughly clipped by his mother, stood out in ragged tufts. Brother and sister were very much alike, slight of build, slim-fingered and dark-eyed. But Ummahan’s mouth was full and red, strangely alive in the wanness of her face, like a bright late-blooming flower on the autumnal steppe.

  Hasan’s eyes were fixed on the flames. He saw a pack of wolves running and tumbling over each other, fighting a pitched battle. And then, in an instant, all gone! How could they have vanished so fast? Just now that big wolf had been there, ears pricked, tongue thrust out and almost licking the mossy rock wall. And then with a whiff of the wind it had crumbled into nothingness. But here was a whole forest growing out of the fire, now aflame, burning away riotously, now sunk into blackness and smoke. Hasan sniffed at the acrid fumes with delight, then threw in more twigs and cones. The twigs crackled and a flame darted up, tapering out to the roof of the cave. This is a poplar,
Hasan thought, a tall glowing poplar of fire. Then the tree snapped and fell back into the flames, and now he saw myriads of ants, crystalred, swarming, seething … For some reason the ants upset him. Quickly, he piled brushwood over them and suddenly a horse, a gigantic horse leaped up from the fire.

  ‘Look, Ummahan,’ he shrieked, ‘look how it’s galloping!’

  Ummahan started.

  ‘It’s gone,’ he sighed. ‘Just slipped by in a twinkling. What a handsome horse it was, with its long flying mane …’

  ‘Those flames!’ Ummahan laughed. ‘Why don’t I ever see anything?’

  ‘You wouldn’t!’

  ‘At this rate you’ll soon be like Spellbound Ahmet.’

  ‘Why not?’ Hasan retorted kicking at the sand. ‘Is he a bad man?’

  Ummahan thought this over. ‘No, but he’s mad, isn’t he?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Hasan said. ‘Now look. Look really hard and you’ll see those horses and insects and people, and even the jinn and peris, for there are lots and lots of them, you know.’ He threw in some cones. ‘Now, look well.’

  ‘I never see anything but flames coiling round and round like ropes,’ she complained.

  ‘Here it comes!’ he shouted. ‘A greyhound! See, it’s running. It’s gone …’

  ‘I didn’t see it,’ she said, downcast.

  ‘What a pity,’ he sighed. ‘It was such a beautiful greyhound.’ Then he took her hand. ‘Never mind, you’ll see them one day too.’

  They fell into silence, lost in their thoughts.

  Ummahan was the first to rouse herself. The winter sun was sinking fast and it had turned bitterly cold.

  ‘It’s getting late. Mother’ll be anxious if we stay after dark.’

  Hasan rose and walked up and down, up and down, dragging his feet in the soft sand.

  ‘I don’t feel like going back!’ he said helplessly at last. ‘Not ever!’ He was thinking of the lucky blue bird. Oh, to catch a thousand of them and hang their darkly shining heads all around the village. That would turn away the evil eye. A miracle …

  ‘If only we could be sure that Mother wouldn’t cry,’ Ummahan said. ‘And then … If it wasn’t for the dark …’

  ‘If we didn’t get hungry,’ Hasan added.